


Away Without Leave

by KifuSlick



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2003), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: A little bit of mystery, Action, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Memory Loss, Poisoning, interrupted family dynamic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:53:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28025025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KifuSlick/pseuds/KifuSlick
Summary: Leonardo's intuition leads him to a mysterious cat-person from a far away land, surrounding by a heavy army of Foot Clan. The turtles save her from their grasp, but then grasp at straws as they figure out who she is and where she came from. As they search, they suffer a heavy loss, and struggle to cope with the new family dynamics.
Kudos: 1





	Away Without Leave

**Author's Note:**

> This is a third draft of an old story I initially started in 2011 and finished in 2016. A lot - and I mean a LOT - will be changed from that first draft. I started a second draft four months after finishing the first, but only stuck with it for a year. I'll start by working off that second draft before the real drastic changes happen. For once, this story is outlined, and it'll accommodate a lot of material.

The weather was perfect for a run. Spring was in the air, carrying a slightly earthier scent to it despite the heavy weight of exhaust fumes perpetually hung in the air. The moon was out, waning delicately from full, allowing the perfect amount of illumination to see by without being seen. City lights tried their best to fill in the blanks where the moonlight failed to touch, but they didn’t reach to the very top of most buildings.

That particular area, above the streets at dizzying heights, the four humanoid terrapins made use of the space. They possessed the means to leap from one building to another with ease, compliments of uncounted training runs previous this.

For the moment, they were simply on the move. No words spoken, no ultimate goal in mind. That was, until Leonardo gave pause at the head of the pack. His brothers, sensing his hesitation, likewise pulled to a stop beside him.

“Guys,” Leo said lowly. His eyes were focused on something not even there as he strained his hearing and spiritual senses.

“Leo?” Michelangelo asked nervously. He scanned the cityscape around him, as if he could see what Leo was feeling. Not a single shadow stirred. For the city of New York at the dead of night, it was quiet.

Leonardo held up a finger to his mouth, his eyes still fixated on what he could not see. “Something’s wrong.”

“Leo, there’s nothin’ here,” Raphael reasoned. He wasn’t capable of picking up on the hair-raising feeling Leonardo had, despite the fact that as reptiles, they had no such thing as hair.

“Not here,” Leonardo agreed, just as quietly as before. His brothers leaned in to better hear him. “I can’t – I can’t describe it. We need to go uptown.”

“That’s descriptive,” Raphael muttered.

“This way.” Leonardo pushed past the pack of his brothers to start off in a new direction, adding a sense of urgency to his pace that the run didn’t have before. No one struggled to keep up, but the trailing trio were a little winded when Leonardo came to another stop. This time, there was no disputing Leo’s sixth sense.

Before the four turtles, only a couple buildings half a block away, the watched a swarm of black-clad Foot ninja. At first they stood neatly, as if in wait of orders. They obviously weren’t interested in the turtles, their sworn enemies, so something else had to be amiss.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Mike asked. He mimicked Leo’s low voice from before, as if the Foot ninja could hear him from so far away.

“Whatever it is it’s no good,” Raphael hissed. His hands already clutched at the sai on his belt, his muscles tensed for action. Raph felt Leo’s hand on his shoulder, holding him back, and he nearly turned on his brother. “What are you waitin’ for?” he barked.

“An answer to Mikey’s question,” Leo replied. “We need a plan of action. They’re not actually interested in us.”

“For once,” Mike chipped in.

“Yet,” Raph snickered.

Just as the ninja surged forward, Leonardo pointed to the edge of the building they’d previously surrounded. “Whatever that is, it doesn’t belong.”

“Like something mystical?” Donatello asked, pitching in for the first time since leaving the lair earlier that night.

“I don’t think so,” Leonardo replied. “Whatever it is, it’s alive. Don, you get whoever it is away from the Foot. Raph, Mikey, and I will handle the ninja.”

“Should I be doing the saving?” Michelangelo asked. “Ninja in shining armor … just isn’t Don’s thing.”

Leo leveled a glare at Mike even as he stepped forward to take off across the rooftops again. “Don’t start with me, Mikey.”

In the few seconds it took for the turtles to cross the rooftops, the figure the ninja were after nearly took a plunge off the roof and to the streets below. It appeared as if it was aiming toward the neighboring building across the alley, but it didn’t have the strength and training the turtles did. It managed to grab the ledge with its hands, but its body dangled precariously close to death.

Now that Donatello was closer to the one they were saving, he could tell that it was obviously not human. It was small, about the size of their Master Splinter, and similarly furred. Cat ears protruded from its head neither human nor feline, but something in between. Thick fur covered the cheeks, a scratchy fur on the nose’s bridge. The body was slender but powerful, albeit not used to the strenuous activity required to get around the city in such an unconventional manner. Its back was curved like a house cat’s spine. A bush tail continued down the spine a good length more. Long arms supported the upper half of the body while shorter legs dangled below it. At least, the limbs were long and short in relation to a human. Four stubby fingers and a thumb with a hardened paw pad ended the arms while four stubby toes on a cat-like foot completed the leg. No feature gave away the gender of the humanistic feline.

Donatello knocked a few of the ninja reaching for the creature to the side with his staff, sweeping it along their knees for added clearing effect. Quickly kneeling down in front of the struggling creature, tucking his bo staff listlessly away with one arm, Donatello reached for the animal’s wrists without contemplating the consequences of its reaction. Claws gripping into the rough surface of the stone retracted and it allowed itself to be pulled up to safety without a struggle.

Michelangelo stayed to Donatello’s back as he pulled the cat to safety, and he could hear the crazed laughter form his brother as his weapon cracked against sword and body alike. The two were safe for now.

“Hi,” Don greeted quickly. “I’m Donatello. But we’ll have to exchange pleasantries after I get you out of here.” Donatello glanced over his shoulder to get a visual on his covering brother. The casualty count was thickening in the turtles’ favor. On the next building over, Raphael and Leonardo were handing their own crowd. Donatello could prove himself a great asset in a tight crowd such as this, but he had his orders: get the object of interest away from the Foot. “C’mon, follow me.”

Donatello once again grabbed the cat’s wrist, lightly this time. Just enough to get it to respond. Its eyes didn’t look like they were focusing well, and it was possibly slipping into emotional shock. Understand, considering it had been jumped by one of the biggest street gangs New York City had to offer. It followed Don without protest, able to keep up with him without him needing to adjust his pace. Michelangelo covered him until the fire escape, and then held his ground to allow Donatello time to escape with his new friend.

Don slowed his pace once he made it to street level and made sure to keep the cat angled so that his body was protecting it. His goal was the manhole cover in the middle of the alleyway. “Here. You’ll be safe down here,” he told the creature.

The cat nodded absently, eyeing the dark hole before it. It dropped from its hind legs to all fours, which appeared to be just as natural of a position for it. Holding on to the edge of the sewer entrance, it wrinkled its nose and found Donatello’s eyes with its large, grey ones. “It smells terrible down there.” Either Donatello was imagining it, or the voice sounded strangely feminine. English, faintly accented.

“I know,” Donatello agreed. He looked back up to the silhouettes of his brothers fighting the Foot above him. “But we need to hurry up before the Foot know where you went.”

The cat stared down into the dark hole, the tension of hesitation clear on her shoulders. After inhaling a sharp breath of air, she turned herself to creep down the ladder. She moved awkwardly, unsure of her own grip. Donatello stood guard as he waited for her to descend. So far, there were no signs of anyone following, including the trio of brothers Donatello left behind.

Climbing down purposefully, Donatello touched the cat softly on the shoulder to announce his arrival on the sewer floor, and gently guided her through the labyrinth of underground passages.

“Do you know why the Foot were after you?” Don asked her. He was rather impressed that she trusted him enough to follow him into the dark unknown, especially considering her lack of speech and questions. She spoke English, and it sounded like she spoke it well. It wasn’t an issue of mute.

“No,” she said simply. Her voice sounded small. Scared.

Donatello held back a frown, though he knew full well that she wouldn’t have been able to see his expression. He figured that it would be too much to ask for a straight answer when it regarded the Shredder. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.” He continued guiding her deeper into the sewers, toward home. He would be in for quite a lashing if everything topside was an elaborate stage just for the turtles’ demise, but he had a feeling about this one. She seemed so innocent.

“In all that commotion, I didn’t ask you your name.” Small tack. Help him gauge who she was.

“Oh,” the cat replied softly. “I’m Lila.”

“Well, Lila,” Donatello said. His hands deftly opened the control panel to access the door to their underground residence. “Welcome home.” The hydraulics of the door hissed softly as it opened, flooding the sewers with bright light. Lila pulled against his grip on her shoulder in reaction, hiding as best as she could behind Donatello’s shell. Don smiled down at her. “Sorry about that. I probably should have warned you.” He stepped forward and released his hold. “Come on in.”

He walked backwards, watching her as she timidly followed him inside. When the door started closing on its own, she jumped, but didn’t run off. Overall, Donatello thought she was handling everything quite well. Better than April had when the turtles first brought her home.

“My brothers will be back home soon, after they’ve taken care of the Foot. I had orders to get you out of there.” He gestured vaguely to his home around him. Michelangelo would have given her a tour, but Donatello wasn’t up to the task. “Make yourself comfortable while we wait. Leo will have a lot of questions.”

Watching her in his peripheral to keep himself from seeming creepy, Donatello made sure her nerves settled down before he started attending to things around his lab. He didn’t expect his brothers to be very long, so he didn’t want to get tied up in anything where he would lose track of time. It was a common habit of his that he could ill afford, especially with their new house guest.

Master Splinter hadn’t stirred from his room. Whether he was deep asleep or in deep meditation was unknown to the young student, but either way he wasn’t going to wake up his sensei to let him know that he had single handed brought in a complete stranger to their stronghold.

Donatello could feel Lila’s eyes on him as he moved around the lair. Every time he looked back to check in on her, she had barely moved from the spot where he had left her. She’d sat on the ground to refrain from standing, but that was about it. When she sat, she tucked up neatly, her tail wrapping tightly around all four of her legs. After he returned from the kitchen, however, she had disappeared. A momentary bolt of panic sent his heart into a frenzy. Immediately pulled out of his thoughtless wandering state of mind, he did a once-over of the room until he caught sight of the feline.

She had found the couch in front of the televisions. Her body was curled tight, contorted in ways that the turtles would never be able to move. She appeared to be a rather fluffy mound, especially since she had covered her face with her bushy tail.

Settling down as quickly as he had worked himself up, Donatello strode over and took a seat beside her on the worn down couch. Leaning against the arm, he grabbed the remove and switched on the array of televisions. Turning down the volume to a reasonable level, he scanned the news stations for anything strange. Often times the fights between the turtles and the Foot didn’t make the news, but sometimes Donatello worried about it anyway. If any more of the humans found out about their existence, they would permanently have to find a new place to live.

Nothing on the television set satisfied the turtle, so he switched it off in time for his brothers to make their entrance into the lair.

The sound of the hydraulics wafted across the vast space. Donatello took a breath to center himself and stood to confront his brothers as they crossed the lair’s floor.

“Dude!” Michelangelo’s voice echoed around the once quiet lair. “That’s the most Foot I’ve seen in months!” He was walking backwards into the lair, but Donatello could still catch that manic grin across his face. Both Leonardo and Raphael looked to be rather pleased with themselves as well, though Leo was doing the best to smother the emotion. “And we kicked their butts! I bet they all went running home to their mamas.”

“Mikey, that’s enough,” Leonardo warned. He was still doing a miserable job of wiping away his amusement, and it only egged Mike along further.

“Why? You were there, Leo. I think we got better since the last time we’ve seen them, ‘cuz it’s never been so easy to drop so many ninja before.” His three fingered hand bunched up into a fist of excitement, his shoulders hunched by his grinning face. “Now that’s what I call fun!”

Raphael grumbled and rolled his eyes at Michelangelo’s fun, the high of the fight slowly draining at Mike’s chatter.

Abruptly changing the course of the conversation, Leonardo locked eyes onto the turtle that had awaited their arrival. “Hey, Don. How did things go for you?”

“Without a hiccup,” Don said. “And she’s fine.”

“She?” Leonardo clarified.

Raph grunted. “Great. Brainiac’s got a girlfriend.”

Donatello scoffed at Raph’s comment. “Yes, she. The Foot were after a little mutant cat, but she’s not sure why.” Donatello wanted to explain the events and details he had pulled together after they split up, but as soon as that sentence was out of his mouth, he knew he didn’t have much more to add. From the looks on his brothers’ faces, he knew that it was hardly enough to satisfy their sense of curiosity and that he would be bombarded with questions. He would have to answer them whether or not he wanted to.

“Where did she come from?” Leonardo asked first.

“I don’t … know,” Donatello answered uncomfortably. He leaned against the back of the couch and scuffed his toes across the brickwork on the floor. Glancing over to where Lila was taking her cat nap, he realized there was no evidence of her having been there at all. He hadn’t asked a lot of questions, because he knew that Leo would anyway, and he was beginning to regret it, especially after bringing her to their home. Now that she was missing – somehow – not that the other three were aware yet, he felt a hard lump of fear form in his throat.

“When I found her, she was panicking, so I thought ribbing her for answers wasn’t a good idea,” Donatello said in defense.

“So where is she now, smart one?” Raphael shot at Don. His eyes narrowed. Don figured he’d meet Leo’s contempt, but naively hoped Raph would keep a lid on it. Donatello offered a small shrug. “Ya lost the fu-” Don cringed outwardly at Raphael’s explosion.

Leonardo jumped to Donatello’s rescue as soon as he noticed the prickly brother bristling. Raising his voice over top Raph’s angry one, he gave Don a stare of his own. “Raph has a point!” he shouted. In a much quieter tone, he added, “Don, we need to find this mutant cat you rescued, both for our sake and hers.”

“Her name’s Lila,” Donatello offered, as if her name would put the entire situation back into balance. He didn’t know much about her, but he did know her name.

“Right. We need to find Lila. Help us look for her. Do you think she could have found her way out of the lair?”

Donatello opened his mouth to tell Leo that she had just been beside him when they’d opened the door, but Michelangelo spoke faster. “Hey guys!” Mike called. The three brothers swung their attention to him. In the abuse against Donatello, all three of them had forgotten about Michelangelo. “I think I found her.”

Donatello turned so that he could see Michelangelo where he squatted on the ground. Throwing a quick look at Leonardo, hiding a smirk that threatened to grace his face, Don said, “Nope, I don’t think she could have.”

“Smart ass,” Raphael muttered. Curiosity getting the better of him, Raph joined Mike to find their guest. “That’s what we were fightin’ hundreds of ninja for?” While Raphael greatly exaggerated the opponent, the tone in his voice didn’t embellish upon his frustrations. He didn’t like the amount of work versus the reward, despite it being well after the fact.

Donatello cast him a disapproving look and nudged Mike aside. “Mikey, you’re crowding her. She’s shy.” Why else would she be so quiet while following a giant mutated turtle through the rank sewers?

“Hey!” Michelangelo shouted. He cried out more from the startle, but also from being told no. One look at Lila, however, and he knew that Donatello was right. “I mean … sorry.” He shot a soft smile in Lila’s direction, even though all he could see was a furry, light gray mass with blue-grey eyes staring at him. She blinked slowly at his apology, but otherwise didn’t move. Donatello wasn’t sure if that was from fear or something else.

Raphael was the first to tear his eyes away from the newcomer, his characteristic scowl glued to his face. “Now what are we gonna do with her?” he asked. He took a few steps away from the group and stood with his arms crossed firmly over his chest. “We’re not jus’ gonna keep her, are we?”

Leonardo turned so that his side was exposed to the cat, but so that she was still within his peripheral. “I’m not sure, Raph. Don bringing her here limits our choices, but we’ll figure something out. We always do.”

Donatello lowered his face quickly out of shame, even though Leonardo’s comment was spoken in a tone far from pointed.

For a while, no one else spoke. Michelangelo eventually broke the silence. “Could we … I dunno ... be friends?”

“What?” Raphael barked. He was temporarily unable to comprehend what Michelangelo meant by such a thing. Donatello lifted his eyes again to look at his innocent brother, but kept his mouth shut to avoid further embarrassment.

“I think what Mikey’s trying to say,” Leo tested slowly, “is that we should think of Lila as an equal and assume she’s friendly.”

“Like innocent until proven guilty!” Mike exclaimed. He instantly warmed up to Leonardo backing him up. “But it’s friend until proven enemy.”

“An enemy of our enemy is our friend,” Donatello added. While Mike wasn’t usually the horse to back in a race of reasoning, Donatello felt like he had a good point. Appealing to Leonardo’s goodness with Mike on his side might pull him out of the small hole he dug for himself earlier.

Leonardo sighed, as if Michelangelo and Donatello had him caught. He turned to Raph, needing the last brother to sign in on the deal. “We saved her, Don brought her home, now it’s our job to make sure she’s safe and out of the Foot’s hands. That’s that.” Michelangelo added an enthusiastic nod to affirm Leo’s statement.

Raphael grunted, turning away completely. “I never said I wanted to throw her out.” As if his piece was done, or perhaps feeling the weight of his brothers’ resolve against his, Raphael turned his back on the group and made a beeline for his room. The four mutants left behind were silent as they watched his retreating figure until he’d climbed the fire escape to the second floor and disappeared from sight through his doorway. He was metaphorically closed off from their little world, including their not-so-little problem.

Once Raph was gone, Leonardo turned back to Lila, kneeling down to her level. Holding out a hand, though not close enough to her so that she could claw or bite it, he offered her a friendly smile. “I’m Leonardo,” he told her quietly, “a friend.”

This got a reaction out of the oversized cat. She shifted her position, unwrapping her tail from around herself so that she resembled something a little more humanoid. Although she didn’t take Leonardo’s hand, unfamiliar with the gesture, she did give him her full attention by looking him square in the face. “I was listening,” she said softly. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Leonardo blinked out of embarrassment. He should have realized that she had human-level intelligence by the way Donatello spoke of her, but he couldn’t have fathomed it until he actually spoke with her. She wasn’t like the other mutants that he was used to communicating with: his brothers, his Master Splinter, and Leatherhead. Unlike them, she was more like the animal she resembled than like a human. Combined with her silence, he took her as a dim-witted animal than a mutant. “I-I’m sorry about –”

“And I’m not a … mutant,” she interrupted. Her voice gained a little strength with the interruption. “I’m a _Homo silvestris._ ”

Michelangelo, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, piped up: “A what?”

“It’s a taxonomy classification,” Donatello explained without a moment’s hesitation. “Humans are _Homo sapiens,_ I’m not really sure what we are, and Lila calls herself _Homo silvestris._ ”

“Uh, thanks,” Michelangelo replied, drawing out the hissing s. His voice suggested that Donatello’s explanation didn’t help him in the least bit. “Y’know, I think I’m gonna go … do … I dunno.” With the same uncertainty coating his tone, Michelangelo pointed off to his room before turning around and heading in that direction. Once he was a good distance away from Donatello, Leonardo, and Lila, he picked up his pace before quickly retreating out of their view.

As soon as he was gone, Donatello turned back to Lila. Leonardo had never taken his eyes off of her. “Lila, where did you come from?” He expected that it couldn’t have been too far from New York City and for many reasons. She spoke perfect English without a heavy accent. And although she claimed that she was not a mutant, Donatello was unaware of any mutant-like cat-humans running around anywhere.

“I don’t know,” she said. Her voice went back to the weak tone she began with. Although it appeared that she wanted to tear her eyes away from the pair of turtles left, she kept her face held high, continuing the eye contact that was established. “We never had a name for it, but I know that it’s far from here.”

Donatello silently contemplated that information, skimming over the fact that she was ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. He could have been wrong with his initial inference.

“Lila, can we trust you?” Leo asked. It seemed such a silly question, since anyone could have said yes and never meant it, but Leonardo had his reasons for asking. Because she was such an uneasy creature, she wouldn’t have been able to hide much. In fact, her reaction was as readable as an open book.

She hunched her shoulders and cast her eyes downward out of shame. Although Leonardo didn’t know what was going on in her head, he kept silent until he got a verbal answer. After a moment, Lila raised her eyes again and gave him a small nod. “I don’t want to cause your family pain.”

Leo and Don exchanged a quick glance before Leonardo returned his gaze to her. “Then you’re going to have to trust us.” Again, he offered his hand, but it was once again ignored. “Lila, take my hand and follow me some place comfortable.” Even with the open invitation, she continued to stare at his hand, still hunched into the small form she assumed in the corner. Another small look at his brother, and Leonardo was able to get Donatello to coax her out of the corner.

“Come to my room,” Donatello offered. He gently led her forward to the place in question. Leonardo stood where he had been crouching to talk to Lila, watching the pair walk off to Donatello’s room before he looked around and retreated to his own. Leo wasn’t sure about how this would all work out, but he was confident that the turtles wouldn’t suffer too many damages for it.

Donatello offered Lila his bed without telling her that it was his, but she quietly declined it. He didn’t even have to press for an explanation, as she gave it: she was much more used to the ground as opposed to a fluffy cloud-like surface. Don suspiciously let it slide, as she had taken a catnap on their couch, and allowed her to take one of his beaten pillows to take residence among the many papers by his small desk. He wasn’t sure about the length of her stay, but if she was going to stay long at all, he’d have to do some serious convincing so she could be more comfortable around the lair.

Once he was comfortable in his bed, Donatello had a difficult time falling asleep. He gave himself a good half hour before he conceded that sleep wasn’t coming. Don rolled over, resting his cheek on his hand. The light from his alarm clock the light creeping in from the main part of the lair allowed Donatello’s trained eyes to scan the floor of his bedroom until he found the dark shape of Lila curled up.

Thinking that she was asleep, he continued to watch the very slight rise and fall of her sides, as he was unable to check out himself. Still lying on his side, Don shifted slightly so that his arm wouldn’t become numb after being shoved under his shell for so long, but after that he was still. His mind wandered through reasons as to why the Foot would want the cat. As far as they knew, the Shredder wasn’t about to go around and pull together a mutant army. Granted, Shredder wanted the turtles dead, but that was because they had meddled into his business far too much for his liking. What were teenagers for, after all?

At the thought of age, Don blinked, his focus once again on Lila’s form. He had been given her name, and he was aware that she didn’t know the name of the place where she hailed from, but other basic information was currently denied them For the moment, it was because Lila was in no state to talk, with her unconscious and all, but he wondered if she would ever give away her personal information anyway. Lila had a private air about her, although Donatello was getting the feeling that she was more likely to tell him over his brothers.

Donatello shrugged that train of thought off the rails. His brain relatively unoccupied again, Don found himself stifling a large yawn. Shifting again to cover his mouth with his hand, he blinked again to clear his fuzzy vision.

Lila’s ear flicked in his direction at the noisy yawn. Staying still so that he would no longer disturb her, Donatello waited for her ear to relax again, but it did not. Quietly so as not to wake her, he whispered, “Lila?”

“Yes?” Her reply was immediate without any trace of drowsiness. Perhaps Don had been incorrect in thinking her asleep.

“You’re awake,” he observed stupidly. This statement caused her to lift her head up and twisted in his direction so that her big eyes were fixed on him.

“Yes,” she confirmed anyway.

“Are you comfortable?” Donatello couldn’t help but be concerned, especially after the turtles’ hushed argument before he had flicked the lights off.

“No.”

“Am I bothering you?”

“No.”

“Then why are you awake?” Sleepiness wasn’t becoming of the genius. While he couldn’t shut off his brain, it still wouldn’t work at full capacity.

“Because long periods of sleep are atypical of my kind.”

Before, when she had mentioned herself in plural form, suggesting that there were more creatures such as herself, Donatello had ignored it. Now that the two of them were alone and calm, the fact couldn’t be as easily skimmed over. “You mean that you’re not unique?”

“Everything is unique,” Lila rebutted. “But I said that I am a _Homo silvestris,_ and while our species is few, it is not as miniscule as one.”

Her vocabulary was quite impressive from what Donatello was gathering, but that alone didn’t help him. All of her explanations, while short, were begging more questions than answering them.

“How many of your species are there?” Donatello inquired. He couldn’t keep the pure curiosity showing through his voice. The sleepiness had been effectively forgotten after the conversation became less one-sided.

“There are … four others of my kind,” Lila replied with an obvious hesitation before stating the number. Donatello briefly wondered why, but he didn’t press for an answer behind it. Instead, Don simply hinted about his curiosity.

“Four? Are you sure?”

A pained inhale broke through her lips, and Donatello instantly regretted asking such a thing. “I had three great friends and a sister growing up, but a few cycles ago my sister fell ill and passed away. It took a while for me to get over it, but … T – my friends helped me overcome the pain. Eventually the tom I was closest to fathered my kits.” She hesitated even more here, the panic obvious in her eyes even with the nearly nonexistent light. “A-another one of the toms, he … he didn’t like me having his kits and he … we … he’s gone now, too.”

Donatello tried his best to keep the suspicion from his own eyes at such a choppy history. He should have been happy that he was told this information in the first place. As Lila continued, her voice pitched higher and her vocabulary took a turn for the worse. Pulling his mind away from the pessimistic thinking, Donatello got to wondering how old she could be again, especially at the mention of having children.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” he began. Donatello paused, but a blink of her eyes encouraged him. “May I ask how old you are?” She acted like she had been around for her fair share of years, but she had an almost child-like air about her when mentioning her past.

“Fourteen cycles?” Lila replied. The rise of her voice at the end caused Donatello to believe that she wasn’t so sure about that. Even so, he had no idea what a cycle was.

“What is a cycle?” Donatello asked.

“When the moon is fully realized again,” Lila explained.

Donatello nearly choked. That would put her at about a year old, if she was talking about lunar cycles. “You act more maturely than that,” Donatello complimented. Questions buzzed about his head. He wondered what the life span of her species was, if they could reproduce within a year’s span.

Lila’s shoulders sagged. “I had my reasons to grow up quickly. And I have always been interested in language, though where I come from, new words are hard to come by.”

“Are you sure that you don’t remember where that place is?”

“If I ever see it again, I’ll recognize it, but to my knowledge it does not have an official name.”

“Sorry for my nagging.”

“It’s no reason for apology,” Lila assured him. A silence stretched out between them, but Lila never relinquished eye contact. Another yawn erupted from Don’s mouth as their conversation settled down, and he was about to drift off again, lulled by the musings, but her soft voice jerked him back to complete awareness. “The others … like you, do you have a name?”

“What do you mean?” Donatello distinctly remembered giving her his name when he rescued her form the Foot.

“I am _Homo-_ ”

“Ah yes. We call ourselves the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” Donatello offered her a friendly smile at this, hoping it’d satisfy her question. He’d never bothered to assign a species name to them simply because they were mutant turtles. It was a genetic anomaly and there weren’t a whole lot of them.

“The ‘teenage’ part won’t last forever.”

“Well, no….”

He thought he saw a small flash of her teeth at this, as if he had been awarded a smile.

“Does this stone jungle have a name?”

It took Donatello a moment to figure out what she meant by stone jungle. Eventually it hit him that she was talking about the city. “New York City,” he replied, “Sometimes called the Big Apple or the City that Never Sleeps.”

Lila mouthed the names of the city after him, resting her head back on her front paws.

“That turtle wearing blue … Leonardo. He was cold and calculating at first, but once he talked to me, he changed completely.” Lila thought for a moment. “I don’t think he likes me.”

Donatello was taken aback at this comment. He never thought that Leonardo would have animosity toward any of their invited guests. “I don’t think it’s that, Lila. Leo’s … protective of his family. He keeps a close eye on all of us. Having to worry about your well-being as well might seem a little daunting to him right now, that’s all.”

Lila lifted her head again, though not quite as high as before. “We’ll see,” she said calmly.

“I won’t let him, or Raph for that matter, kick you out on the streets to fend for yourself against the Foot.” Donatello was making a friend out of Lila, and the turtles didn’t leave their friends to fend for themselves.

“Who’s Raph?”

“The one that was yelling most of the time.”

“Oh, him.” Lila’s eyes narrowed into comfortable slits. “I don’t like him.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Donatello’s mouth. “It’s hard to imagine why,” Don said sarcastically. “He may not seem like the friendliest of turtles, but after you get to know him, you’ll get to see through his hard-won mask.”

“How long does that take?” Lila idly asked. She lowered her head again, one ear still centered on Donatello.

“Depends on the person, I think. Michelangelo – the friendly, kinda clingy turtle – still is having a hard time finding the soft side of Raph.” Donatello meant it as a joke, but he was sure it went right over Lila’ head.

Lila was silent again, and Donatello was beginning to feel too tired to break it. No amount of conversation was picking him back up again. “You have an interesting family,” she finally commented. “It’s almost reassuring.”

“How so?” It was probably one of the last questions Donatello was going to ask before he let things slide for the night.

“It reminds me of home,” Lila replied quietly. When Donatello didn’t reply, her ear swiveled back to a more comfortable position, but Don couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not, just like before.

Donatello wasn’t sure if his family reminding her of home was a good thing, since she didn’t seem to want to talk about it, but he took comfort in knowing that his family wasn’t the craziest thing in the world. Sometimes a little normality was nice.

The room was silent again save for their hushed breaths. Neither of them moved any longer as sleep sunk its silent claws into Donatello and pulled him into unconsciousness. Donatello was known for sleeping too little, but he still welcomed sleep when it called to him outside of a project. Within minutes, his breathing had become more regular and deep, and would stay that way until he was ready to wake.


End file.
